Monotimbral (from the root prefix ''mono'' meaning one, and ''

timbre In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...

'' meaning a specific tone of a sound independent of its pitch) is usually used in reference to electronic

synthesizers A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

which can produce a single timbre at a given pitch when pressing one key (if the synth is monophonic) or multiple keys (if the synth is

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...

). An electronic musical instrument may be multitimbral, which means it can produce two or more ''timbres'' (also called ''sounds'' or ''patches'') at the same time. Instruments which may be multitimbral include synthesizers, samplers, and

music workstation A music workstation is an electronic musical instrument providing the facilities of: *a sound module, *a music sequencer and *(usually) a musical keyboard. It enables a musician to compose electronic music using just one piece of equipment. Or ...

s. A multitimbral instrument might be configurable in a variety of ways: *Splitting the keyboard at a given point allows a musician to play, for example, a

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

sound with the left hand and a

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

sound with the right hand. *Layering timbres allows a musician to play, for example, a pipe organ sound and a string ensemble sound together. *Combinations of keyboard splits and layers may be possible. *An external sequencer might play an accompaniment of bass and drum sounds on the instrument (actuated through

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

) while the musician plays a piano part on the keyboard of the same instrument.

Background

Multitimbrality is achieved by having a synthesizer with more than one sound producing module. In a fully digital system, each sound module is virtual, since in reality

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s combine samples together in real time for output to a single D-A (digital to analogue) circuit. Synthesizers that can combine ''n'' timbres together are called ''n'' voice multitimbral. For example, a synthesizer capable of playing eight voices or ''timbres'' at one time would be an ''eight voice multitimbral'' instrument. Multitimbrality is distinct from

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chord ...

, which is the number of notes which can be played at the same time, not the number of different timbres. All multitimbral instruments are polyphonic, but not all polyphonic instruments are multitimbral.

Applications

Inexpensive multitimbral synthesizers combined with a

equipped computer made home studio recording much more accessible to the digital musician, particularly keyboard players. By capturing information digitally via MIDI, one could play back an entire work with several voices on a single multitimbral synthesizer. This, combined with a relatively cheap four track tape machine or higher-end 16 and 24 track

reel-to-reel Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is plac ...

machines would allow a musician to layer a number of keyboard tracks digitally, and then use a single track for MIDI information and the rest for analogue sounds, without requiring intermediate mix-downs to gain additional needed synth tracks.

References

{{reflist Synthesizers